C Corwin - The Cross Kisses Back

Aubrey, as you know, showed up the first week of March, full of vinegar.

Wednesday, March 22

On Wednesday I took Dale to lunch at Speckley’s.

I was expecting him to be pissed off by Tinker’s decision. Instead, he was concerned only about Aubrey’s safety. “Maddy,” he said, “the 3rd District has been corrupt for decades. I don’t know if Percy is part of any illegal stuff or not. And I bet Chief Polceznec doesn’t know either. But what both the chief and I do know is that Lionel Percy is a five-hundred-pound piranha. You don’t swim in his pond. Polceznec probably figures Percy will retire in a couple years and then he can put some Spic-and-Span guy in charge and turn things around.”

I tried to get Dale to eat his meat loaf sandwich before it got cold but he just kept playing with his potatoes. “Why didn’t you tell Tinker all this?” I asked. “It looks like you’re trying to protect your pals on the force again.”

Dale wasn’t happy with that. “Again?”

“You know what I mean.”

He stuck his fork in the top of his potatoes and folded his arms. “If I tell Tinker I’m afraid for Aubrey’s safety, that will only prove her point, won’t it? If only Aubrey wasn’t so damned gonzo about everything.”

Well, Dale was right about that. Aubrey was one very determined young woman. Most reporters are emotionally detached from the stories they cover. It doesn’t matter much if they’re covering a murder trial or a Red Cross blood drive. They go where they’re assigned, gather up the who-what-when-where-and-why, come back and write the damn story, go home and feed their cats. They get whooped up about a story from time to time, sure. But when they do, it’s the story that gets them excited, not the reality.

From what I’d seen, Aubrey McGinty was different. With her it was the reality. Yes, she’d told Guthrie Gates she was only interested in Buddy Wing’s murder because it was a good story. But I had the feeling she really wanted to help Sissy James. And if she wanted to investigate why Chief Polceznec left Lionel Percy commander of the 3rd District, it was because the people living there deserved better.

“Now Mr. M,” I said, “It might turn out to be a good story.”

He decided to eat. “It’s not sour grapes. She really could get hurt.”

Friday, March 24

Aubrey not only sat on my desk, she pulled her legs up under her chin. It was one of those late March days in Ohio when the weather should have been a lot better than it was, when wet snow covers the sprouting daffodils and tulips, when people are torpid and testy, bundled up in sweaters they’d already put away for the summer. “Look around the newsroom,” I hissed at her. “Do you see anybody else sitting on the top of their desks?”

She didn’t get off, but she did lower her legs and dangle them over the side. I accepted the partial victory. “So, what brings you to the morgue on this wonderful afternoon?”

She yawned. “I finally got that stuff from probate on the good reverend’s estate.”

Suddenly it wouldn’t have bothered me if she were standing on her head. “And?”

“It seems the money trail leads straight to God.”

“You don’t think He poisoned Buddy Wing, do you?”

She was no more in the mood for my smart-assed remarks than I was for hers. “It’s really quite remarkable. Wing only had $6,400 in the bank. A $10,000 life insurance policy. A tiny paid-for colonial in South Ridge. A 1987 Pontiac Sunbird valued at nothing. All left to the Heaven Bound Cathedral.”

“What about all the white suits and loud ties?”

“God got those, too.”

“Then he wasn’t killed for his money.”

Aubrey handed me my tea mug and we headed for the cafeteria. “Do you know Wing only made $34,000 a year. You’d think he was a member of the newspaper guild.”

“And how do you know he only made $34,000 a year?”

“I goo-goo eyed one of the young studlies in homicide into showing me the church’s financial report from their files.”

“You think Guthrie Gates will settle for $34,000?” I asked.

“He was already making $60,000 when Wing was killed.”

“And now?”

“Well, that’s this year’s financial report, isn’t it? Which the police don’t have. And I’m guessing Gates wouldn’t be too crazy about sharing with us. But it doesn’t matter anyway.”

We’d just walked through sports. I took a look over my shoulder. A half-dozen sets of male eyes quickly shifted from Aubrey’s jeans, some to the ceiling, some to computer screens, some to the floor, none to me. “It doesn’t matter?”

Aubrey was looking over her shoulder, too. Making sure she was being appreciated. “Even if Gates killed poor old Buddy for the tithes and offerings, he’d have to take it easy with the church elders for a while.”

This late in the day the cafeteria was empty. I headed for the hot water. Aubrey headed for the candy machine. “So where does this leave your investigation?” I asked.

“Nowhere and everywhere,” she answered. “Just like before.”

Saturday, April 1

It was a toss-up whose car we’d take that morning. Neither my Dodge Shadow nor Aubrey’s Ford Escort was in any shape for a long drive. But if we were going to Marysville somebody had to drive. My car got the nod when we compared tire tread.

I picked her up at her apartment building, a crumbling old Art Deco palace at West Tuckman and Sterling. It had been a wonderful neighborhood once. I’ve seen the old pictures: muscular oaks lining brick streets, trolley cars, big old Tudors surrounded with wrought-iron fences. Now the oaks are gone, the bricks paved over with asphalt, the trolleys replaced by boxy buses, the wrought-iron by chain-link, and the wonderful old homes chopped up into efficiency apartments for poor souls who don’t have two nickels to rub together.

Aubrey was waiting outside for me, in the rain. She got in the car with soaked hair, a mug of black coffee, and cheeks as pink as bunny slippers.

“Good gravy,” I scolded, “you’ll catch pneumonia.”

“Pneumonia is caused by micro-organisms, not raindrops,” she said.

It was only six-thirty and I made an illegal U-turn to get back to the I-491 interchange. “I don’t think so, Aubrey.” I told her how President William Henry Harrison gave a four-hour inaugural speech in the rain, contracted pneumonia, and died four weeks later.

She was pressing the coffee mug against her forehead. “Don’t mother me, Maddy.”

I took I-491 to I-76 to I-71. We hit one pocket of rain after another. Aubrey was driving me nuts changing stations on the radio.

My lunch with Dale Marabout the previous week had poured more fuel on my already combustible curiosity and sent me looking for answers about what made Aubrey tick. Whenever I’d gotten a spare minute, I’d snooped through the files looking for anything to do with Rush City or a McGinty. And now I was chomping at the bit to ask her about something I’d found. However, what I’d found wasn’t good, and that kept me chomping instead of asking. It kept me disappointed in her, and disappointed in me, all the way to Marysville.

Marysville is a little city of eleven thousand or so in Union County, a half hour northwest of Columbus. Back in the Eighties the governor persuaded the Japanese carmaker Honda to build a big auto plant there, providing thousands of good jobs and ruining thousands of acres of good farmland. Until then the county’s biggest employer was the Marysville Reformatory for Women. It’s where they sent Sissy James after she confessed to poisoning Buddy Wing.

Saturday morning is not a good time to visit someone in prison. It’s when everyone wants to visit. So there were quite a number of cars lined up at the gate and the guards were taking their time checking people in.